The present invention relates to an apparatus and process for blanching or cooking pastas.
In the aqueous blanching of pasta strands it is usually necessary to transport the pasta strands on conveyor belts in a long flat unit about 25 metres long which takes up a great deal of space.
In the commercial cooking of fresh pasta products, there is often used a conveyor system which carries the pasta product through a tank of hot water along a submerged horizontal zigzag travel path. For example, U.S. Pat No. 2,905,105 describes a stack of closely spaced, parallel conveyors wherein the top run of the endless belts of adjacent conveyors travel in opposite directions. Another type of conveyor system comprises a pair of continuous belts which are held with a uniform spacing between them during their horizontal zigzag travel through the hot water and such systems are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,522,217 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,752,491. However, conveyor belts are expensive. They also easily become worn or broken especially when travelling through hot water, leading to costly breakdowns.
In addition, when blanching using the conveyor systems described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,522,217 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,752,491 where the pasta strand is horizontally conveyed through the blanching tank between two parallel zigzag conveyors, there are practical difficulties because the pasta strand absorbs water and thus gradually expands both in width and in length which means that the speed of the strand at the outfeed end of the tank should be higher than at the infeed end. However, this is impossible to attain since it is the same endless conveyors which enter and leave the tank.